The 12th Doctor
by General San3
Summary: The Doctor is about to regenerate for the twelfth time. Who, what, why? And how will Amy take it? I'm looking for some help on this one - consider it a rough draft. Any comments are welcome!


**Bang!**

The TARDIS jerked like a bronco trying to unseat its rider, throwing the Doctor backwards against the console. He barely noticed the pain as his arm hit the hard surface, because the dread he had been squashing for hours now was catching up with him.

"Doctor! Are you all right?" Amy called from somewhere to his right, and he slowly turned his head to look at her. She had fallen to the ground, hands propping herself up. Her brown eyes were wide with fright, and as the long-feared energy began to stir in him, he thought she deserved a "goodbye," at least.

"I'm fine, Amy," he said slowly, moving through the wreckage of the TARDIS to help her up. The room was still shaking, but as they moved out of the blast zone her shaking eased into a mere 3.4 on the Richter Scale. "Richter." That was a fun word to say.

"What?" Amy managed, clinging to him.

"Good word," he replied. "Richter, pumpernickel - disgusting bread but good name – squeegee, carrot – again, yuck -"

Amy interrupted him, her jaw a hard line. "Doctor, you realize that we're spinning through the vortex of space near a black hole?"

"Are we?" His skin was starting to feel squirmy, his bones liquid. He should really step back from her. He lifted his hand and stared at it. Was it his imagination, or was something that glowed like a star moving through the veins under the skin?

"Doctor! Snap out of it!" she snapped, her hands shaking him.

"I will in a minute, Amy," he whispered. She stopped shaking him – he never called her Amy.

"What's going on," she managed in a whisper. Her eyes dropped to the blackened hole in his coat, the one he had claimed wasn't serious – but the pain was growing ever dimmer, a sledgehammer rather than a twisting knife. "Are you dying on me, Doctor?"

He tried to smile, but all he could see was this pain, this long succession of hims that were always waiting to become someone else. The blessing and the curse of the Time Lord.

The energy was growing stronger now, coursing through him. It was almost time, and no effort of will could hold it back forever. "I'm not dying, Amy . . . I'm dead."

She faltered, stepped back, then her eyes sharpened. "If this is a joke . . ."

"It's definitely a joke, Amy," he said, this time managing a real smile. "The longest, funniest joke of my life. Now, you'd better stand back."

This time, no hesitation. Her eyes were dim with fright. "I don't understand."

"Curse of the Time Lords, Amy. Never know who you're going to wake up as."

His world became fire as Amy disappeared.

* * *

><p>He blinked open his eyes and was having trouble figuring out what he was seeing. Everything was a bit blurry. <em>No, don't tell me I need glasses.<em> Pink blobs seemed to be moving with rapid, jerky motions through his field of vision, and beyond that was nothing but a blur. A loud roaring noise was assaulting his ears. He blinked several times, trying to adjust, to figure out what to do. Who, what, where, he was.

The pink blobs became a bit sharper, and suddenly beyond them he saw a pale face, wide, unblinking eyes and long red hair. It was a face. He rather liked that face. _Oh, what was her name, her name . . . Amelia. Ah yes._

Her mouth was moving, her jaw working up and down, and he suddenly realized that the noise in his ears was, in part, her voice. Saying a word he knew – what was it? Oh, right . . .

"Doctor! Doctor! Doctor . . ."

He opened his mouth to answer her and noticed something odd. He couldn't put a name to it, but something was definitely wrong. His mouth, that's what it was. Felt soft, strange.

_New teeth?_ That's not what it felt like_ at all._

He decided to try out his voice. "Amy?" he tried that first. Was that his voice? Something was definitely wrong. "Am I a girl?"

"Doctor – that _is_ you?" she said, her voice a curious mixture of emotions that he wasn't able to decipher at the moment. More important things first.

"Am I ginger?"

She frowned. "It's hard to tell."

"I'm having trouble moving," he noted – his hands, he couldn't find his hands. His voice was still bothering him – a high-pitched squeak, almost too faint to hear.

"Doctor, I – I'm not sure what was supposed to happen, but I think something might have gone wrong," Amy continued, her voice on the edge of hysterics.

"Oh, no," he said as reassuringly as he could, while still trying to locate his hands. Or his arms, for that matter. "I'm always a new person after the regeneration. It'll take a while for you to get used to me. Don't worry – I'm still the Doctor, but new!" She was bothering him now; he was getting worried about his feet, too. "Tell you what, go to the console and tell it to look me up. I'm going to try to sit up . . ."

"Oh . . ." she frowned, moved out of his sight, and then he felt something behind his back. Her hand? It was enormous! His vision wavered, the room tilted, and he was looking at the TARDIS console. His head was soooooo heavy. He wasn't expecting it and his head crashed forward onto his chest. It was then that he noticed he was naked. "No clothes," he muttered. "Not expecting that." This was most definitely wrong. "Why can't I move my arms?"

"Doctor . . ." Amy's voice was in his ear again, and her hand was in front of him. She was holding something small and pink – it looked like a sausage with a tiny squid at the end. Not an Earth squid, of course, but a squid from Halifraxus 3, near the Japrinct quadrant – the squids that looked rather like . . .

"A baby's hand?" he guessed. "And a baby's arm . . ." the pink things wiggling on the floor. "Legs. _My_ legs."

His ears were adjusting, and he deciphered the other noise that was crashing into his ears. The proximity alarm. Proximity to what, he had no idea.

"This is not good," he said in a high-pitched voice, watching the tiny pink fingers moving on their own.


End file.
